Labor workshop: sociability or income?

Abstract

Some questions are raised about the participation of disabled personmentally ill person and other people in the labor workshops carried out in the community where they live. This paper is part of the research that analyzed the constitution and the methodology of intervention in a project of Rehabilitation Based on Community. It is an attempt to understand the meanings attributed by members of two workshops of income generation to their participation in those experiences, through the accomplishment of group interviews (focal groups) and analyzing the conditionings of the sociocultural context in its conformation. We found that the workshops, planned to help generate revenue to their participants, had as a main result the widening of their social net, breaking up their domestic isolation and affecting their primary sociability. In the development of these workshops, important aspects are deeply related to the history of the territory, to the ways that its inhabitants interpret their position in the social system, to the cultural ideas about disability and about their role as assisted people. To a social group many times excluded of the world of labor, due to the disability or to the condition of social insertion, the proposals of generation of income inscribed in the initiatives of cooperative work mean alternatives that ally possibilities of extension of their social net, of personal development and of providing income. The health professional that act in the interface care /attention - income generation might be mediators of group interactions, of the organization of productive processes and of the relations with the market, implying the incorporation of other knowledges to his or her practice.